I always take great pride in my business but today was a really special day for me. We announced our world book day competition offering schools the chance to win £500 in book tokens. An amazing and much needed resource for many schools, which I hope can help enrich children’s lives.

This is so important to me because reading has always played such a huge part in my own life. I remember vividly my Dad reading “Topsy and Tim” books to me as a child and giggling like mad when he got their names wrong “Tipsy and Tom”. He would give all the female character’s low voices and males high pitched ones! Those memories are precious to me and helped cement reading as something that gave me great joy.

As I have grown my Kindle is ALWAYS in my bag and I enjoy a wide range of books, most recently I finished “the room” and was absolutely engrossed in it until the very last page. My life was a little empty for several hours after finishing it!

I enjoy reading with my son who is 2, his current favourite is Goldilocks and the three bears, which he will listen to over and over. I can’t wait to share all my favourites together, especially introducing him to Harry Potter.

The second reason I am so proud is that giving back is important to me as an individual but also to our ethos at Smile. Local community is so important especially to families and in this small way we can help schools on limited budgets and hopefully encourage children’s imagination and literacy skills.